Something's pink. In the BBQ. Who you gonna call?

Over the years, I've lodged plenty of complaints in restaurants.

The steak is overcooked. The fish is undercooked. The order is wrong. The soup is cold. 

One time, we told the waiter that the wine smelled like formaldehyde. He told us that's what it was supposed to smell like. Thanks but no thanks. (This was at the late and lamented Romagnoli's Table, which closed more than 30 years ago. Boy, did I ever love their tortellini with nutmeg sauce.)

When making a complaint, I am unfailingly polite and understanding. Having done my time waitressing or otherwise working in food service, I am 100% aware that, while sometimes the server f's an order up, if there's something wrong, it's almost always the fault of the kitchen, not the server.

From I my experience, I can say that sometimes, the complaint that a diner made was totally out of left field.

As a Big Boy waitress, I once served a rather hefty woman a piece of our famous strawberry pie. (Just googled: apparently Big Boy

Strawberry Pie actually was a real thing. I will make one next summer.) Anyway, my customer ate every crumb, right down to the plate, and then told me - with a straight face - that it was awful and she wanted another piece to replace it. (Reader: she did not get her wish.)

But most of the diner complaints I fielded during my brilliant career as a waitron were justified.

My favorite occurred at Durgin-Park.

One of the lunch specials back in my day was the Poor Man's Roast Beef, a thin slice of rump roast, au jus, served with a veg (I can't remember the full, long list of options we had to recite, but stewed tomatoes was on it), a slice of cornbread, and a cup of tea or coffee. Ninety-nine cents!

Anyway, I went to pick an order up for two Poor Man's, which had been ordered by two young women out having lunch together. One of the plates held a nice rare looking slice o' meat. The other held a grisly, gray assemblage of four pieced together stray slab-ettes. 

I told the chef I couldn't bring the grisly gray out to the table, as the two women were eating together.

He insisted that I make an attempt, and assured me that, when they refused to take it, I could come back to the kitchen and get an edible replacement.

A minute later, I was returning to the kitchen, plate in hand, when I was stopped by Durgin's owner, a giant, raging, nasty madman. 

"Where are you going with that?" he barked at me.

I replied that the customer had refused it and wanted another piece instead.

"There's nothing wrong with that meat," he grabbed the plate out of my hand. "Where are they?"

I walked him into the dining room and pointed the culprit out, then stood there rolling my eyes as he went into full crazy mode, screaming at the poor woman and kicking the pair out of his restaurant. (As if they were waiting for him to kick them out; they had immediately begun gathering their things to leave.) 

While the two women were getting up from the table, he turned to me and snarled, "And make sure they pay for the cornbread." (Reader, I did not charge them for the cornbread. I may have handed the guy manning the register a dime.)

Anyway, my bottom line is that sometimes complaints are justified; sometimes they're not.

Although the restaurant might have handled it better, I'm on the side of Clyde Cooper's Barbecue in Raleigh, NC. 

The other day, a customer ordered a takeout barbecue plate, only to have her return it, complaining that the meat was pink, undercooked. Or so she thought. Turns out slow-low-temp-smoked BBQ can be done and pink at the same time.

I am reminded of a recent cooking experience of my own.

The last couple of times I've made meatloaf, it's been pink.

The first time it happened, I couldn't quite figure it out. 

It was done - I even used the meat thermometer to check - but it was pink.

Turns out that onions can cause the pink. Since I've always made meatloaf with onions, it's either that I'm using a different kind of onion, or I just never noticed that my meatloaf is pink.

I do know that my mother's meatloaf was never pink. The only difference in our recipes is that I use breadcrumbs, while she used a roller-pinned sleeve of Saltines.

Back at Clyde Cooper's, the restaurant folks told the customer that the BBQ was okay, and the customer left.

[Owner Debbie] Holt said a few minutes later a Raleigh Police officer came to the restaurant, talked to the customer outside and then entered Clyde Cooper’s, asking about the pork.

“The cop looked so confused,” [Debbie's daughter] Ashley Holt said. “He seemed baffled by someone calling the cops over this.” (Source: Raleigh News & Observer)

Ya think?

The Raleigh-Wake Emergency Communications Center confirmed that an officer was dispatched to the Clyde Cooper’s address at 327 S. Wilmington St., on Tuesday, but declined to comment on the nature of the call. Holt said she explained the pork’s color was from the smoke. She said the officer went back outside, talked to the customer, and then left. Tuesday night, Holt said she saw a new one-star Google review for Clyde Cooper’s, complaining of undercooked pork and claiming to have called the police on the restaurant.

The News & Observer was able to get a hold of the customer, who told them that she'd been eating barbecue all her life, and it had never been pink. And now this. So she wasn't having any, and when she saw the pinkness, she went back to Clyde Cooper's.

The diner asked for either a refund or something else from the menu, but was refused both she said. That’s when she called 911. “If you’re telling me you don’t do refunds or exchanges, there’s a problem,” the diner said. “It was the issue, the way the situation was handled. You have to do either a refund or an exchange. If you’re not going to do either, that’s the issue. That’s the reason I called the cops.” 

I mean, in what universe does pink BBQ rise to the level of making a 911 call? Shouldn't everyone know that 911 is for life and death situations. Or, at minimum, a suspected crime.

But, no, the pink barbecue was just too glaring, too galling.

After the 911 call had been placed - but before Barney Fife showed up (sorry, this was in North Carolina) - Clyde Cooper's did offer the pissed off diner a piece of fried chicken. Which she took, but which just pissed her off further, as she felt she should have been offered two pieces of chicken (that's what's on the small chicken plate, which is what the 911 diner felt would have been comparable to her order).

Maybe, since the diner hadn't accepted Clyde Cooper's perfectly plausible explanation, the restaurant should have just taken her order back and offered something dollarwise-comparable.

Still, calling the cops?

Now, if the woman at Durgin-Park had called 911 after the restaurant's owner had gone ballistic on her, I could have seen it.

But me? It would take me more than that to dial 911. 

Truly, the only 911-worthy event I ever witnessed in a restaurant was a knife-fight between two cooks in the open kitchen at the long gone Jack & Marion's delicatessen in Brookline. But there was no 911 then, and I believe the incident was bloodless, and was resolved by the manager without calling in Brookline's finest.